Magazine N°155

MOSCOW TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS

Every cloud has a silver lining!

Could it be that the successive crises of 1998 and 2008, followed by the collapse of the rouble in the winter of 2014-2015, have finally had a positive impact on the Russian economy and, by the same token, on consumption patterns? It would seem so. So, bling-bling is out, or almost out, easy money is no longer the order of the day, caviar and champagne are rarer, and the same goes for very big cars and the pretty girls that go with them.

The trend now is for the emergence of a middle class more focused on the useful than the sumptuous. More bourgeois, in a way. Moscow is changing dramatically, thanks in part to a policy of major works. Little by little, a new Russian spirit is emerging, a way of looking at the city that is a little more in line with international standards, and which involves turning one's back on the excessively wide avenues inherited from the Soviet period, planting trees, widening pavements, opening pedestrianised streets and installing a system of bicycles.

By the standards of most major international megacities, Moscow is no exception to the rule, building a new business district four kilometres west of Red Square: Moscow City. Not only skyscrapers, including an extraordinary 255-metre tower that resembles the structure of DNA, but also metro stations, shopping centres, cafés and restaurants, and above all homes, most of them top-of-the-range, generally located on the upper floors of buildings. From up there, you can see all the way to the walls of the Kremlin.

The Kremlin, the poetry of Red Square under the snow on an early winter morning, the twisted bulbs of Saint Basil the Blessed, the Moskva frozen in ice, the Bolshoi too... All the great symbols of an eternal Russia are there, waiting for the businessman in bleisure mode - a contraction of business and pleasure - in other words taking advantage of two or three hours snatched between two appointments.

Because being a businessman certainly doesn't make you any less of a man.

Serge Barret, Editor-in-Chief

In this issue

TRAVEL DIARY Olivier Krug: "Champagne is multicultural
NEWS : aircraft, railways, hotels, meetings/businesses, conventions, throughout the world
TECHNOLOGIES
Drone taxis Flying taxis: Take-off imminent
Regulations RGPD: data on the road to reason
NOMADE - Digital shopping :
AIR - Trend Low cost: the new standard in air transport
HOTELS Health and well-being : healthy hotels for healthy bodies
BUSINESS DISTRICT MADRID - AZCA: the Castellana's North Star
BUSINESS DESTINATION MOSCOW
SURVEY : Industrial tourism: companies welcome companies
INCENTIVE :
Wide Angle Cruise: the wonderful Mediterranean
Theme : Switzerland: Gstaad, beyond chic
A magnifying glass Seoul: the mad energy of the Land of the Morning Calm
MANAGEMENT
Coworking office life for millennials
Market SME's on the lookout for new business travel tools
SHOPPING Christmas and New Year: our shopping selection
DECIDEUR Interview with Andreas Bergmann, CEO of TGV Lyria